Camp Street’s hidden art way

BELOW ground at Ballarat’s Trades Hall is a walkway decorated with emerging artists’ eclectic and colourful works.

Open weekdays from 9am to 5pm, assistant secretary of the Ballarat Society of Artists and the display space’s coordinator Sue Clarke said the Trades Hall staff have been very supportive of local creatives.

“There’s lots of things happening in the Trades Hall now like performing arts and I’ve been able to use a space downstairs to run print making classes for years,” she said.

“We’ve been doing it for the last two years or so, so we get a bit of feedback, people saying they enjoy coming down and seeing the work.

“The crazy year that we’ve had has seen artists locked away with their art unable to share it with anybody so it’s very important these artists have the opportunity to display their artworks in Ballarat of all different types of art, not just traditional arts.”

Each month Ms Clarke puts a call out to members of the Society to see if anyone is interested in showing their work.

“We have such a variety of members with different styles and it can range from watercolour works, to acrylic works to abstract and other works as well like lino prints,” she said. “We try to have at least two or three artists hanging at once.

“If people want to purchase the artworks, they can talk to Brett at the Trades Hall and he can organise something or they can call the artist directly if the phone number is on the artwork.”

Always pushing to ensure the exhibit feels fresh and new for visitors, Ms Clarke said the artworks are changed our reasonably quickly to ensure as many creators as possible gain exposure from the space.

“We started this one a month ago and it will be up until the December 18 when the Trades Hall closes for Christmas,” she said.

“We do try to rotate them every month or so and we’ll be doing another in the new year starting the January 18.”